A Young Man

You're never too old to become younger.

Mae West
*****************
"I can't do some of the things old folks do any more. I'm not as old as I used to be." Bate

I knew an actor years ago, we were about the same age, who, when we reached our 30's began to talk about all the things that were going to go wrong with our bodies. Soon this was going to fall apart and that was going to go and we would start having trouble with the other thing. He was literally talking his way into old age and trying to take me with him. I was determined to reject his appraisal of growing older. But I guess some of it rubbed off on me because when I was 35 another actor friend said I reminded him of a old fogy.

That remark made me sit up and take inventory of myself. I wasn't an old fogy, I was just acting like one. So I improved my mentality and began to think of myself as young.

When I was in my early 50's I accidentally ran into the first actor in a restaurant in New York. I felt in my prime and looked it. He looked terrible and old. My friends asked me who the old man was. I had to admit, sadly, that we were the same age.

I learned how much an attitude can affect a result. The actor had been forced to give up his career at an early age and carry around with him a double yoke of infirmity and decrepitude. While I had pulled myself out of that pit by rejecting those suggestions he fell more deeply into it.

Now, 20 years later, I have found myself in the same joyful rejection. It's not that I don't have the problems that confront age, it's that I reject the idea that I have to succumb to them and allow them the prerogative of defining me as a miserable old wreck.

Oh, I almost went for it. An option to relax into uselessness presented itself with a smile and an handshake. I almost agreed with the diagnosis my thoughts were giving me. But I didn't need a friend to tell me I was an old fogy. I had learned the lesson.

Ten years ago I worked with an actor who was well into his 80's and going strong. Those are the people I want to emulate now. He had a bad knee which was eventually replaced, but he had a joyous and energetic attitude, and after the knee replacement he went on working.

So I'm a senior citizen, a coot, a geezer, a curmudgeonly bag of bones, but I'm no fogy and I'm not as old as I used to be.

DB - The Vagabond
*************************
AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
************************

Molasses In January

Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.

Mae West
********************
A certain poet once said that even if he knew every word in a dictionary it would still be a fascinating book to read. I have a Random House/Webster Unabridged dictionary and on long winter evenings I sometimes sit at my desk under the warm lamp, open it anywhere and read about words like absolutism, exiguous, homiletic, palimpsest and proleptic.

Why waste time with a big heavy dictionary? Why not just use Google? It's faster.
Because you have to know the word you're looking up before Google can help you and it doesn't give you a page of words with which to discover new ones.

I get ads and offers through AOL and others for gadgets and programs that will make my computer run faster. That's nice, but I don't want it to run faster. It operates a little bit faster than I do and that's fine with me.

Gandhi wrote "There is more to life than increasing its speed." It would seem to me that everyone is late for work, anxious to get home or rushing to get away from other people. There's an exit from the New York subway at Columbus Circle where the stairway makes a turn and there's a bit of the platform half way up, to the side of the stairs. I came up the stairs one morning with a whole mob of people. I stepped aside on that section of the stairway to let them pass. A moment later a young man joined me. I said to him "Everybody's in a big old hurry to get there." He laughed and said "Well I'm not." I replied "Neither am I." So the two of us stood and waited until the crowd was gone and then made a leisurely exit up the stairs and into the daylight.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's great that you can get from New York to LA in 6 hours and bask in 4, once you get on board the plane that is. I once waited 3 hours to board a 2 hour flight. But it isn't so much a matter of how long it takes to get there, it's a matter of what you going to do once there. You're probably going to iphone someone to tell them you arrived. Instant communication. Great stuff. But I enjoy taking my time, a few hours, to write something you're going to spend 2 minutes reading. That's okay with me. My pleasure is in the doing and it's worth doing slowly.

DB - The Vagabond
*********************
SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

Only 5 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
********************